Dr. W. J. Hoffman proceeded early in August to Victoria, B. C., where numerous sketches of Haida totem posts and carvings were obtained, in connection with the myths which they illustrated. At this locality attention was paid to the burial customs and osteologic remains of the nearly extinct tribe of Songish Indians.
At Port Townsend sketches were obtained of Thlinkit ivory and wood carvings, clearly indicating the adoption by that tribe of Haida art designs. Here, too, many Indians of British-American tribes were met on their way south to work in the Puyallup hop fields, notable among which was a large number of Haida, whose persons were examined for the purpose of copying the numerous and varied tattoo designs with which they were profusely decorated. Interpretations of many of these characters were obtained from the persons bearing them, as well as from the chief artist of the tribe, together with concise descriptions of the methods and customs in connection with tattooing and the materials used. Drawings were made of a collection of Eskimo pictographs and ivory carvings at the museum of the Alaska Commercial Company and the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, Cal.
At Santa Barbara, Cal., Dr. Hoffman discovered some painted pictographs and examined a number which have not yet been published. In several private collections at this place were found interesting relics of the Indians formerly inhabiting Santa Cruz island, the most important of which was a steatite cup containing earthy coloring matter and pricking instruments of bone, which had evidently been used in tattooing. Painted pictographs were also visited in the Azuza cañon, twenty-five miles northeast of Los Angeles.
At Tule Indian Agency, in the deep valleys on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, sketches of pictographs were made in continuation of work accomplished there two years before. Vocabularies were also obtained from the Waitchumni Indians here located, as well as from the few remaining Santa Barbara Indians at Cathedral Oaks, Santa Barbara county, Cal. By far the greatest amount of pictographic material was collected in Owen's valley, California, where series of petroglyphs are scattered over an arid, sandy desert, the extremes of which are more than twenty miles apart.
OFFICE WORK.
The work upon a synonymy of the Indian tribes of North America, which has been mentioned to some extent in former reports, has been continued with increased energy.
Every tribe of Indians of any size and importance has been treated of by historians under a variety of names. The sources of these different appellations are manifold. In very many instances the names of tribes or other bodies of Indians communicated by themselves have been imperfectly understood and erroneously recorded; misspelled names and typographical errors have been perpetuated.
Traders, priests, and colonists have called the same tribes by different names and the historian has often added to the confusion by handing down these synonyms as the names of other and different tribes. Not a few tribes well known under established names have received new names upon a change of residence, especially when they have removed to a great distance or have coalesced or allied with other tribes. Added to these and to other sources of confusion are the loose and dissimilar applications of the terms clan, band, tribe, confederacy, and league, the same term having been used with various meanings by different authors.
As a consequence the student of Indian languages and customs finds himself in a tangle, as regards tribal names, which it is beyond the power of the individual worker, unaided, to unravel. The scope of the work in question includes the attempt to trace the several names back to their sources and to ascertain their original and proper application, to define their meaning when possible, and to relegate each tribe under its proper title to the linguistic family to which it belongs. In the completion of this work the whole force of the Bureau assists.
The need of a volume giving the results mentioned has long been felt, and it is believed that it will prove to be one of the most important contributions to the accurate study of Indian history ever made. The classification of the languages of the North American Indians is closely connected with the synonymy of tribal names, each work assisting the other. During recent years the number of students who have directed their attention more or less exclusively to the study of Indian languages has been constantly augmented, and as a result of their labors the number of vocabularies has been correspondingly increased; hence the demand for a more comprehensive and satisfactory classification than now exists.